Commercial clothing printing companies must process thousands of articles daily. One of the final steps after drying of the printed material is folding of the article, such as a T-shirt, sweat shirt, sweater, towel, piece goods or the like. Unless a large mechanized folding device is employed, at a cost of thousands of dollars, the printer is relegated to laboriously hand folding each item, involving substantial time and labor, reducing profitability. Furthermore, since each person in the folding operation may fold the article slightly differently, uniformity may be compromised and efficient packing in boxes may not be optimal.
Several patents have been granted for garment folding devices which are directed to paper or cardboard shaper inserts that are folded and remain integral with the garment to maintain the garment shape in a folded position. Such patents include U.S. Pat. No. 924,761; No. 1,018,905; No. 1,852,604; No. 4,190,151; No. 4,240,553, and No. 5,154,329. These patents fail to address the problem of folding large numbers of garments without utilizing one folding device per garment that remains with the garment. Furthermore, none of these inventions can be conveniently used with other items such as towels, skirts, underwear or the like.
It would be desirable for an inexpensive, storable article folding device to be capable of folding a number of different types of garments or other items in a rapid manner with a high degree of reproducibility.